About Me

I'm a recently turned 40-year-old knitter who happens to be a librarian. This means that I have the power to interlibrary loan ANY knitting book that I want. I am the librarian for my knitting guild, which makes me a knitter, a librarian, a librarian for knitters, and a knitting librarian.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Jester Hats

I've been on a jester hat kick lately, in an effort to decrease my stash. They're great for using up leftover yarn that I can't bear to part with. The pattern is from Philosopher's Wool, and I think it was published in Knitters many years ago.

The first hat was knit on size 4 circulars, with sport weight yarn, and fits a baby. Depending on how annoying you want the hat to be, you can attach bells to the points of the hat. I made my nephews some with bells several years ago, and they loved them. I'm not sure how much their parents loved me afterwards, but it was worth it.

The hats below were knit on size 7 circulars, with worsted weight yarn. I experimented with casting off the top with the three needle cast-off on both the right-side and wrong-side, and I think I actually like the right-side version better, even though it's wrong. Got that?! These sizes will probably fit a small child. I'm giving one to a friend for her nephew, and will donate the second one when the Centre County Knitters do their annual donation to the Women's Resource Center at the Festival of Trees.

In another effort to accelerate stash reduction, I sent a bag of sock yarn remnants to The Heathen Housewife, who's making an amazing sock-yarn mitered square blanket.

One of the projects I brought to Europe this summer was a pair of diagonal rib socks from IK, made from Louet's Gem Opal yarn. Now, I've knit countless pairs of socks over my knitting lifetime, but this sock knitting experience did not prepare me from the sorrow that was discovering that I actually needed TWO balls of 100g yarn, not one. Ugh. Usually, 100 g of fiber is plenty to make a pair of socks, but I was not taking yardage or thickness of the yarn into consideration. I also did not read the directions carefully (note the highligher on the part of the pattern that reads TWO balls of yarn. duh.). If this was a better photo, you'd be able to see that one sock is completely done, and I've started the cuff on the other one. I tried reworking the socks - making the cuff shorter, not carrying the ribbing onto the foot - and it was no use. The gem opal diagonal socks were not meant to be. Now I have one skein yarn burning a hole in my stash. I bet it would make a nice little leafy-patterned scarf.